Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/477

Rh, brother, sister, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, and had separate words for each of these relationships, which we are only able to express by adding the words "in-law." They recognized also the condition of widows, or "the husbandless." They lived in an organized society, governed by a king. They possessed houses with doors and solid walls. They had wagons and carriages. They possessed family names. They dwelt in towns and cities, on highways. They were not hunters or nomads. They were a peaceful people; the warlike words in the different Aryan languages cannot be traced back to this original race. They lived in a country having few wild beasts; the only wild animals whose names can be assigned to this parent stock being the bear, the wolf, and the serpent. The name of the elephant, "the beast with a hand," occurs only twice in the "Rig-Veda;" a singular omission if the Aryans were from time immemorial an Asiatic race; and "when it does occur, it is in such a way as to show that he was still an object of wonder and terror to them." (Whitney's "Oriental and Linguistic Studies," p. 20.) They possessed nearly all the domestic animals we now have—the ox and the cow, the horse, the dog, the sheep, the goat, the hog, the donkey, and the goose. They divided the year into twelve months. They were farmers; they used the plough; their name as a race (Aryan) was derived from it; they were, par excellence, ploughmen; they raised various kinds of grain, including flax, barley, hemp, and wheat; they had mills and millers, and ground their corn. The presence of millers shows that they had proceeded beyond the primitive condition where each family ground its corn in its own mill. They used fire, and cooked and baked their food; they wove cloth and wore clothing; they spun wool; they possessed the different metals, even iron: they had gold. The word for "water" also meant "salt made from water," from which it might be inferred that the water with which they were familiar was salt-water. It is evident they manufactured salt by evaporating